DeLand column: In hindsight, ex-Twins are a pretty good team

And there’s today’s disclaimer: Bad decisions happen, to virtually everybody and to literally every single major league baseball team.

No exceptions. We all make ‘em.

But seldom will you find a string of bad decisions to rival this one, as compiled by former Minnesota Twins general manager Billy Smith.

The latest reminder of Smith’s series of blunders arrived recently in the mailbox of subscribers to Sports Illustrated, which on its May 19 edition cover features former Twin Carlos Gomez and his ascendance to Most Valuable Player contender status with the Milwaukee Brewers.

GoGo was generally a disaster while he was with the Twins (2008-09), who acquired Gomez and three forgettable pitchers from the Mets in exchange for Cy Young Award winner Johan Santana in the biggest trade of Smith’s catastrophic four-year tenure (2007-11) as GM.

In Minnesota, Gomez was a hot mess: seemingly uncoachable, offensively undisciplined, willing to swing at pretty much anything, including pitches in the dirt and low-flying airplanes.

In Milwaukee, GoGo has blossomed into a five-tool star since the Twins swapped him for J.J. Hardy after the 2009 season. He finished in the top 10 in National League MVP voting last year, and he’s having an even better season this year for a Brewers team that’s in first place.

That alone is painful enough for Twins fans who have watched a succession of lukewarm bodies patrol center field for their team this year. But the progression of the deal makes it even worse.

Smith traded Santana to get Gomez. He traded Gomez to get Hardy.

One year later, Smith traded Hardy to Baltimore, where he proceeded to hit 30, 22 and 25 homers in the next three seasons while winning two Gold Gloves and making the All-Star team.

In return, Smith got pitchers Jim Hoey and Brett Jacobson, who both were hideous busts with the Twins and are now retired. The Twins literally would have been better off with the proverbial bag of baseballs and broken bats.

To recap: Smith started with a Cy Young Award winner, traded him for a budding All-Star, traded that All-Star for another, and traded him for two lousy pitchers who no longer play baseball. Nice sequence there.

This string of foolishness is one of the primary reasons why Smith was eventually relieved of GM duties and has returned to his original job of counting beans.

It also provides two key members of this year’s All-Former Twins Team — 25 active players who used to be Twins, but are now playing for other major league teams. And, in many cases, playing quite well.

These aren’t all Smith’s fault, of course. One of the most notable is Boston’s David Ortiz, who celebrated his latest return to Minnesota last week with a pair of two-homer games at Target Field.

Ortiz was released from the Twins’ 40-man roster on Dec. 16, 2002 so they could pick up the immortal Jose Morban, who never played a game for the Twins.

Ortiz, meanwhile, has hit 384 homers, driven in 1,216 runs and won three World Series rings since being exiled from Minnesota.

Here’s the complete 25-man roster of the All-Former Twins Team, along with their 2014 salaries:

The total salary of the All-Former Twins Team clocks in at a spendy $152.317 million, which explains why a lot of these guys aren’t here any more. That would rank eighth in the majors this season, behind only the Dodgers, Yankees, Phillies, Red Sox, Tigers, Angels and Giants.

The current Twins, meanwhile, rank 24th out of 30 teams with a payroll of $85.77 million. And so far, the 2014 Twins have gotten more than they’ve paid for with their cobbled-together roster, which consists mostly of spare parts and journeymen, beaks and feathers and feet.

There are only a few current Twins who would probably start for the All-Former Twins Team, and only a few current pitchers who would make the alumni team’s staff.

The suspicion here is the All-Former Twins Team would generally have its way with the current squad. That’s mere conjecture, of course, but at the very least the Twins would like to have quite a few of those guys back.

Perhaps none more so than Gomez. Or Garza. Or Hardy or Ortiz or Dickey or Nathan or ... well, you get the idea.

Hindsight is always 20/20. But as the All-Former Twins Team illustrates, foresight definitely isn’t.

This is the opinion of Times sports editor Dave DeLand. Contact him at 255-8771 or by email at ddeland@stcloudtimes.com. Follow him on Twitter @davedeland. Join him for a live chat from noon-1 p.m. Thursdays at